Chapter 116: The Infinity Stones — and Captain Marvel Comes Home
Ethan kept the explanation simple.
He attributed the Homestead to the Tesseract, which was close enough to true that he didn't feel too bad about it. The Space Stone's energy had unlocked the function; the Space Stone was therefore responsible for it. The system's existence stayed where it belonged — in his head, unshared, the one piece of the picture nobody needed to have.
The reactions sorted into types he'd expected.
Harry and Peter (Tobey) were somewhere between stunned and delighted — the wide-eyed quality of people who kept thinking they'd processed the full scope of what they'd gotten involved with and kept finding out the scope was larger.
Doc Ock and Tony were frowning, which meant they were doing science at the problem and would eventually have questions.
The veterans — Wanda, Pietro, Fisk, John Wick — received the explanation with the equanimity of people who had learned that when Ethan produced something surprising, the appropriate response was to note it and continue.
Wade tested the teleportation six times in sixty seconds, adopting a different pose each time, until Ethan mentioned that he could revoke the privilege.
Wade stopped.
He did not stop thinking about the applications. Ethan could see it.
"So," Tony said, when Ethan had finished. "You broke into SHIELD, faced down Fury, and fought your way through the building. And the whole point was to get that."
He was looking at the Tesseract, which sat on the table catching the afternoon light.
"One of the points," Ethan said.
"You let me think you were there for me."
"I was also there for you."
Tony processed this. "You were there for me and the Tesseract."
"The Tesseract was a secondary objective," Ethan said. "You were primary."
Tony looked at him for a moment.
"Fine," he said. "What is it."
Ethan looked around the table. Everyone was paying attention — the people who'd been talking in clusters had oriented toward the center of the room when the silver case came out.
He put the Tesseract on the table.
Wade, who had been sitting next to it, immediately picked it up and turned it over with the focused examination of someone trying to find the trick compartment. Ethan watched him. Wade found no trick compartment. He bit it.
It didn't give.
He put it back.
Harry covered his face.
"Space Stone," Ethan said. "That's its actual name. It's one of six."
He let that land.
Tony said, quietly, "Six."
"Six Infinity Stones." Ethan looked around the room. "Each one a different fundamental force of reality — Space, Time, Reality, Soul, Power, Mind. Any one of them is essentially a universe-scale tool. All six together—"
"Grants any wish," Wade said. "Wait, no. Summons the dragon. No, that's Dragon Ball." He squinted at the Tesseract. "What happens if you collect all six."
"Any wish," Ethan confirmed. "Unlimited reality manipulation." He paused. "There's someone who has been collecting them for decades. He's not from this universe originally. His name doesn't matter right now, but his objective does — he wants to use all six to eliminate half of all life in every universe simultaneously."
The room was quiet.
Peter Parker (Tobey) said, very carefully: "Half of everything?"
"His reasoning," Ethan said, "is resource scarcity. He thinks this is a solution to a problem. He's wrong, but he believes it completely."
Wanda was looking at the Tesseract with the specific attention of someone recalibrating their threat assessment.
"And the six stones," Tony said. "Where are the others."
"Scattered. Various locations. Some guarded, some not. The one I'm most concerned about—" Ethan looked at the Tesseract. "This one, actually. It's been in SHIELD's possession for decades and it's the most accessible. He'll come for it eventually."
"And you took it from SHIELD," Tony said.
"I'm also using it," Ethan said. "The Homestead runs on it. Which means I have better reasons to keep it secure than Fury did."
Tony thought about this for a moment. "Does Fury know why you actually took it?"
"No," Ethan said. "He thinks I wanted to study it."
"Do you want to study it?"
"I want to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands before we're ready to do something about that." Ethan looked at the room. "Which is a longer conversation. For another time."
He gave the room a moment to process.
Doc Ock was doing the expression he did when he was reorganizing a significant amount of conceptual architecture. Tony was doing the expression he did when he'd identified a problem that was exactly at the scale he was capable of being interested in. Several other people were doing the expression of people who had come for a family dinner and were now aware they'd also signed up for something larger.
"Anyway," Ethan said. "Someone mentioned eating."
Twelve hundred miles away, a woman in a red and blue suit walked through SHIELD's main entrance.
Fury was waiting.
He'd met Carol Danvers in the parking lot — which was, given the day's events, a more remarkable location to be standing than it usually was; there were still people cleaning up the plaza.
"You made it," he said.
"Got your message." She looked at the plaza. "What happened here."
"Long day," Fury said. "Come inside. I need to brief you."
Carol Danvers — Captain Marvel, Kree-empowered, binary force user, someone Fury had called the ceiling-raiser for this particular problem — fell into step beside him.
Her eyes were the eyes of someone who had been in actual interstellar combat and had returned to Earth expecting something that warranted that.
"The threat," she said. "What are we dealing with."
"Someone called Ethan Cross," Fury said. "He runs a neighborhood in Manhattan."
Carol looked at him.
"A neighborhood," she said.
"It's complicated," Fury said. "And he told me you're not going to be enough."
Carol was quiet for a moment.
"He said that."
"Before he walked out of this building with a Tesseract." Fury held the door. "I'm inclined to find out if he's right."
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